Sound score by Helen Thorington.

"Barbara Hammer's OPTIC NERVE is a powerful personal reflection on family and aging. Hammer employs filmed footage which, through optical printing and editing, is layered and manipulated to create a compelling meditation on her visit to her grandmother in a nursing home. The sense of sight becomes a constantly evolving process of reseeing images retrieved from the past and fused into the eternal present of the projected image. Hammer has lent a new voice to the long tradition of personal meditation in the avant-garde of the American independent cinema."
- John Hanhardt, Biennial Exhibition Catalogue, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1987

Awards and Exhibition: Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1987; First Prize, Ann Arbor Film Festival; Third Prize, Experimental Film Coalition Film Festival; Creteil Int'l Festival of Films by Women, France.

Restored print of Optic Nerve courtesy of Academy Film Archive, 2018.